Join the Conversation

McDaniel offers $1K bounty for voter fraud evidence

Geoff Pender, The Clarion-Ledger
10:23 p.m. CDT July 3, 2014

State Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Ellisville, speaks before a crowd of partisan supporters gathered on the south lawns of the Mississippi State Capitol in Jackson, Miss., as part of the Tea Party Express that bused into the state Thursday, April 24, 2014, promoting their theme of fighting for liberty and constitutional conservatism. McDaniel, is running against incumbent U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss. The Tea Party Express are holding events in 10 states as they seek to rally voters around candidates the Tea Party is backing in contested Senate and House races. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)(Photo: Rogelio V. Solis, AP)

State Sen. Chris McDaniel is offering $1,000 rewards for voter fraud evidence as he moves to overturn results of the June 24 GOP primary he lost to incumbent U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran.

McDaniel is asking supporters for donations to fund up to 15 such bounties for evidence that leads to arrests and convictions and for help financing his challenge of the vote.

He claims Cochran and others stole the primary through vote buying and other skullduggery.

The Cochran campaign counters the claims are baseless and McDaniel needs to “put up or shut up,” present evidence of voter fraud or concede defeat.

The contest was dubbed “the nastiest race in America” this midterm, as McDaniel and state and national tea party forces clashed with six-term incumbent Cochran and the state and national Republican establishment. Each side spent millions of dollars attacking the other.

“The most important issue here is maintaining the integrity of the electoral process here in Mississippi,” McDaniel said in a statement Thursday.

On Wednesday he had said, “Thanks to illegal voting from liberal Democrats, my opponent stole last week’s runoff election.”

Cochran spokesman Jordan Russell on Thursday countered, “With each passing day and each new stunt, it becomes clearer and clearer that Chris McDaniel does not care about Mississippi, that he does not care about the integrity of the process, that he does not care about winning a majority in the Senate and keeping the seat in Republican hands in November.

“What Chris McDaniel cares about is himself. The only thing Chris McDaniel cares about is himself, actually.”

Cochran defeated the state senator from Ellisville by about 6,800 votes in the June 24 runoff. McDaniel led the June 3 primary by fewer than 1,500 votes but lacked the majority needed to prevent the runoff. The winner will face Democratic former U.S. Rep Travis Childers and the Reform Party’s Shawn O’Hara, a frequent candidate for many Mississippi offices.

For the runoff, which set a GOP primary turnout record, Cochran openly courted Democrats and independents. This drew cries of foul from McDaniel supporters and national tea party and conservative leaders and media. It’s also brought accusations of Cochran buying votes in the African-American community and collusion with party election officials. Cochran’s campaign denies doing anything beyond standard get-out-the-vote spending and work and says McDaniel has presented no evidence.

McDaniel spokesman Noel Fritsch said the campaign is in preliminary examinations of records in 51 counties has found more than 4,900 improper votes. Most of these are claimed to be people who voted in the June 3 Democratic primary then again in the Republican primary. Mississippi doesn’t require party registration and has open primaries, but voters are prohibited from voting in one party’s primary and another’s runoff.

Fritsch said Thursday the campaign created the $1,000 rewards because it is hearing numerous reports of “all kinds of violations.”

The campaign vows to turn over any evidence it receives to authorities, but Fritsch said he is unsure whether anyone from the campaign has talked to authorities at this point.

The Cochran campaign says McDaniel’s claim of illegalities is baseless and his claim of thousands of questionable votes overblown — more likely to be “a few hundred votes total, statewide” out of 374,000 due to normal levels of clerical errors.

In Lauderdale County, where McDaniel said there are claims of “criminal misconduct” with voting, the circuit clerk’s office issued a statement Thursday saying it had worked with representatives from both campaigns in reviewing records. It said it had found seven possible crossover votes and presented the information to the campaign canvassers.

“We will further investigate to see if they were, in fact, crossover voters,” the Lauderdale statement said. “We were able to certify that the other 11,990 voters were legitimate, with the canvass group concurring with our findings. … With Lauderdale being one of the larger counties, to possibly have only seven crossover votes is a testament to how great our poll workers are in Lauderdale County.”

Fritsch said McDaniel staff and volunteers will continue to scrutinize voting records and the next step will be a formal challenge filed with the state Republican Party executive committee after it passes vote tallies certified by counties on to the secretary of state’s office on Monday. If the committee rejects the challenge, McDaniel can file an appeal in circuit court.